The Prose Edda
by labonsoirfemme
Summary: "For your deceit and treachery, you are cast out of the realm of Asgard, never again a Friend." Loki x Darcy. [Ch. 1/3]
1. Chapter 1

Set Post-Winter Soldier and Post-Dark World. Enjoy!

* * *

"Loki Laufeyson of Asgard and Jotunheim," the Council spokeswomen intones, staring down her nose at Loki from her marbled seat high above above his head. "The Aesir Council has weighed your crimes and the testimony given in your defense and has come to a conclusion."

Even before she speaks the words, Loki knows his fate. The derisive glare, the way she spits her words down to the floor on which he kneels in supplication—he is doomed. And worse, his humiliation is displayed to all gathered in the Great Hall of Asgard. Odin had been crowned here and, one day, Thor will be too. His mother had placed Loki's helmet on his head in this hall, so it seems only ironically fitting that this would be the place in which his punishment is be handed down to him.

"For your deceit and treachery through the clandestine imprisonment of our king, Odin of Asgard, the Allfather, you are stripped of your title of Prince of Asgard."

It stings worse than he'd thought, sending his breath out in a rush. A cry goes up in the gallery, joyful and triumphant. The Aesir had been furious when word had gotten out that not only had the Allfather been imprisoned (just for a _bit_—Loki would have let him out…eventually) but that he had been imprisoned by _Loki_, the wretched frost child that their benevolent king had taken in as his own _son_. A Great Council had not been called in over five thousand years, and yet here they are now, for the sole purpose of deciding what to _do_ with Loki Laufeyson, their former (and second-favorite) prince.

"You are expelled from the Castle of Asgard, never to return."

Sunset. This had always been Frigga's favorite time of day. The light passes through the stained glass windows in the Great Hall, casting glittering patterns across the pillars and floors. She'd laughed gaily when Loki had been a child. He'd hop from one patch of light to another, arms flailing, and she would cast the loveliest of magic to make the light dance for him.

"You are barred from the esteemed Hall of Valhalla, never to enter."

_Good_, Loki wants to scream, but anger and bitterness clogs his throat. An eternity with Odin? He'll gladly take Niffleheim.

"And you are cast out of the realm of Asgard, never again a Friend."

Whatever else the spokeswoman has chosen to say is drowned out as the cries of the crowd rise in exultation. Loki had fought in scores of battles for the Aesir, had used his magic and trickery for the betterment of this realm and its people, yet this is how they choose to respond to his few selfish acts against the weight of a millennia of bowing to Odin's every beck and call.

Well, _fuck_ them. Fuck the whole lot of them.

* * *

When his vision clears, Loki tries to not stare too closely at the residual swirls of Heimdall's magic burned into the grass around his feet. Unless Thor plans to undertake regular visits to Asgard and back, this is likely the last time he will see the Bifrost's mark for a good, long while.

But—they have an audience.

Director Nicholas Fury and a well-armed contingent surround Loki and Thor on the lawn outside the tall, reflective building Loki presumes to be SHIELD headquarters. In addition to the lovely display of the Second Amendment by the nameless and faceless agents, Loki's eyes pick up Barton's kneeling form on a shaded balcony and Doctor Banner lurking behind the group in loose, easily-shredded garments.

"Director Fury," Thor says in greeting. He steps out of the Bifrost's circle to extend his hand for Director Fury to shake. No doubt it is a gesture of thanks and humility.

For this has all been planned in advance: Loki's expulsion, the Bifrost, his admittedly warm welcome on Midgard by the very same assemblage that had sought to end his life in recent memory. It had been Thor who had bargained with the Council to spare Loki's life when he'd heard rumors that it planned to have him publicly drawn and quartered. Day in and day out, Loki had felt the pull of Heimdall's magic and the rumble of the Bifrost as Thor travelled to and fro between Midgard and Asgard, politicking in a such way that would have made Frigga proud. The Allfather had still slumbered then, and to Loki's knowledge, still did. Even when he wakes, he will have no power to reverse the Council's final decision.

Loki has Thor to thank for his life, and Thor to thank for his shame.

Director Fury stalks across the boundaries of the Bifrost circle until he and Loki stand scant feet apart. "You understand the terms of our agreement?" the Director of SHIELD grinds out, looking as though he would rather spend this time lounging in a pit of snakes than speak to Loki.

Accordingly, Loki bows his head. "I shall be confined within the walls of SHIELD till such a time that my release may be properly adjudged," he said, parroting the terms Thor had murmured through the shimmer of magic that had kept him imprisoned deep in the belly of Asgard's castle. "I shall provide SHIELD with any and all information that it may require. When asked, I shall participate in 'team training activities.' I shall refrain from destruction and despotic seizures of power. Should I henceforth undertake any destructive or anarchic activities, I give my explicit consent to my own solitary confinement or execution, following an administrative hearing."

"The shackles have reduced his magical capabilities," Thor explains, gesturing to the heavy metal bracelets clamped around Loki's wrists. "Replacements will need to be made. Perhaps Tony can devise a solution."

Director Fury drops his gaze to the reason Loki has not yet simply created a copy of his image and snuck away from this farce the moment they arrived. When he raises his eyes back to Loki's, a shit-eating grin has slipped across his lips. He raises a single gloved hand and all around the Bifrost's circle, agents lower their weapons and click the safeties back on. "Well then. Welcome home, Loki of _Midgard_."

* * *

"You're shorter than I thought you'd be."

Darcy Lewis squinted up at him and did her third once-over of him in the SHIELD elevator. Undoubtedly in an attempt to raise her in Loki's esteem, Thor had placed a 'Lady' in front of her name, as if Loki no longer wore the Aesir's shackles around his wrists and ankles. "I thought you'd at least be as tall as Thor."

"You'll have to forgive me," Loki replied in a bored tone, "I didn't care enough to create a mental presupposition of you before our meeting to which I could compare your true state."

The woman shrugged and hitched up the strap of her bag on her shoulder. "Don't sweat it, man. The reality is better than anything you could have imagined." She winked and waggled her brows lewdly at him, and Loki's mouth twitched downward before he could stop himself. Black Widow's reflection, flanking his on the thick glass behind Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis, pressed her lips together and turned her head to the side with the telltale huff of a suppressed laugh.

Thor bellowed a laugh, clapping his palm down on Loki's shoulder, and Loki rolled his eyes. The oaf cared nothing for their small space, nor Loki's distaste of being touched while his shackles ensnared him, and "She is a funny one, yes? The others fail to amuse me so well here in this low-ceilinged structure."

"It's gotta be the antennae," Darcy concluded with a decided nod of her head. "Those suckers made you look so big on TV."

The elevator dinged and she whirled on the heel of her boot to face the doors. "She speaks of your helmet, brother—" Thor began to explain as Darcy strode off the elevator and into the hallway, shadowed at each step by her silent, pale-faced companion.

Loki jerked his shoulder from Thor's hand. "I know of what she speaks, fool." His shoes were still uncomfortably light as he walked forward; he thought he were half-likely to float upwards to the ceiling. Weeks of wear had done nothing to acclimate him. Loki was no longer allowed his Aesir clothing and armor, a humiliation SHIELD had imposed in the name of "workplace safety." Thor, for his part, had embraced the heavy blue fabric human men wore about their legs, so enamored was he with his new Midguardian friends and culture.

"'Fool,' he says," Loki heard Black Widow mutter to Thor, "as if he wasn't the one running around Manhattan looking like an upended beetle."

"No, no! Loki's helmet is modeled after my great-grandfather's war helm…" Thor devolved into the story of the original Allfather, and Loki tuned him out. He's had a thousand years of Asgard's glory; he can tune it out for five minutes.

Ahead of him, Darcy barks orders at her "intern," who presumably goes by the name of Lauren. Or, so Darcy had introduced him—_"This is my intern, Lauren. Say hi, Lauren, geez. I know you went to Harvard but surely Social Interaction 101 was a required course there."_—though, judging by the boy's side glances at Darcy, Loki suspected that was not the boy's true name. Garbled her language may be to his ears, it's preferable to the tried and true children's story of how Asgard vanquished the False Supernova.

"You and the other interns, Alice, Johnny, and whatshisname—"

"Uhm, it's Alexandra, Joannie, and Daerron—"

"Yeah, him. I want satellite images of this Charles Xavier's house. I mean, this is ridiculous. It's the 21st Century. Google Maps should be all over this. And I want his bank records, too."

Lauren's steps falter. "I'm…pretty sure that's against the law?"

"Dude! That's what the legal interns are for! Floor 23. Get snappy with it."

* * *

The sunsets on Midgard are far lovelier than those on Asgard.

"Pollution," Jane Foster absently tells him, poring over some of Stark's designs. "Or maybe the distance between our sun and Earth and your sun and Asgard—"

Loki gives up on her explanations and returns to the sunset over the Appalachian Mountains. Thor and Jane had crossed the hallway to Loki's chambers nearly two hours before to discuss his magic-restrictive shackles. Given the terms of his stay on Midgard, Loki'd had no choice but to grit his teeth and attempt to describe to Jane exactly how the device inhibited his magical abilities.

Fury has given Stark charge of designing the new shackles, but even Stark'd had to bow to Jane's purview of astrophysics and Aesir technology, given that she'd spent (merely) a few days in Asgard.

Loki had long since completed the monkey song and dance, as required, yet Thor and Jane appear to be right at home at his table. Blueprints scatter the tabletop, interspersed with cartons of Chinese food. He'd hoped that they would leave once Thor had announced his increasing hunger, but the sustenance had been delivered to Loki's chambers instead of Thor's.

(Loki had discovered a window entitled "Netflix" on his television and had watched a series of flat, moving images entitled "Wild China" a week ago. The relation to his favorite dish, General Tso's Chicken, still eluded him, but he would discover it as soon as he determined how to operate the computer in the corner.)

"Tell me, Jane," Thor asks, voice muffled by his second helping of lo mien. "Your girl, Darcy—why does she not follow you about anymore? Have you no further need of her services?"

Jane sets her pen on the sprawls of paper and smiles with pride. Loki knows that smile—it had a home on Frigga's face, once. _Before Jane brought the aether to Asgard_, his mind hisses, but Loki is fairly certain that should he seek vengeance for his mother's death, Thor would not only not save him from SHIELD, but there would likely not be much of Loki left for SHIELD to dispose of. "No, no. Fury gave Darcy a paid job in deep internet investigatory research. She's extraordinarily good at it. She finds all of these videos of supernatural attacks and sightings _way_ before they ever go viral."

"You do not miss her assistance?" Thor queries, tilting his head to the side, eyes tracking Loki as he moves into the kitchen for another draught of ale. Loki quite appreciated this cool box in which he could store his food and drink. On Asgard, food is preserved with salt or magic, but the result always gives the food a strange taste. Hence, the habit of the Aesir to consume all of the food at a feast, lest they be _forced_ to save it for later. No such guilt here on Midgard.

Jane shakes her head. "No. Darcy and science never really got along. But she's in charge of all of the summer interns, which I think…both helps and hurts her. It would be like…Loki taking command of a bunch of unskilled recruits."

Taking a swig of his ale, Loki braces his other hand on the back of a chair at the dining table, chains between his shackles clinking. Thor looks at Jane, then at Loki, and then laughs. "Ah! She is on, as you say, a power trip."

Giggling at Thor's careful pronunciation, Jane props her chin on her fist. "Exactly." She winks at Thor. "But no one _else_ wants to deal with the interns, so…Fury lets her do what she wants, as long as she's producing material for SHIELD."

Loki arches a brow and traces the grain of the tabletop's wood with his eyes until it disappeared under the scattered papers. "Unchecked power? I can't even begin to imagine the appeal."

* * *

Loki respects that Director Fury hates him, because he makes no attempt to hide it. The other "Avengers" try to make small talk and rub elbows with him given his participation in resolving the aether incident and his uneasy truce with SHIELD.

"How are you liking your new jewelry, Loki?" Fury half-asks, half-taunts as he sweeps into the control room with his leather jacket swinging behind him.

From his seat across the room, Loki lifts his wrist, letting the shiny, slim steel bangle slide up his forearm and catch on the sleeve of his shirt. "Oh, these? Quite lovely, actually. And lacking any spontaneous combustion, which I'm sure was the most difficult aspect for Stark."

Fury barks out a laugh and takes his seat in the center of the room on the raised dais, where Agents Romanoff and Hill already tap away furiously on hidden keyboards. Three computer monitors flank his seat, and he quickly become distracted by what the various screens display. For a long moment, Fury forgets that agents wait on the risers to his dais, watching for his signal to approach and allow a debrief on this world-ending situation or that one. If anyone invaded SHIELD headquarters in that moment, they would surely presume that Fury was the king of this realm. _Well_, Loki muses, pushing lightly on the ball of his foot to swivel his chair back to face the windows, _with all of his Avengers at his beck and call, he might as well be_.

Rogers passes by, obviously on his way to make hyper-masculine conversation with Loki's adoptive brother on the other side of the room. He peers down at the glints of metal around Loki's wrists and ankles. "Can you still pull a rabbit out of a hat?" he asks with a joking smile, and Loki's fingers itch to pull his atoms apart and rearrange them into the shape of an orangutan.

"I can still cast a glamour on you so ugly that Romanoff would finally stop sniffing at your skirts," Loki tells him, smirking when Rogers blushes and looks away. "Simple and easy and learned at my mother's knee. Unfortunately for you, that child's magic not the type of magic that your Director is interested in keeping at bay. Or, fortunately," Loki adds, "whichever way you chose to look at it."

The doors to the control room slide open almost soundlessly, but the racket that Darcy makes as she comes through them would wake the Allfather from his Odinsleep. "…Oh, stop complaining; it's not _that _heavy," she fusses at the young men carrying in the ubiquitous cardboard boxes Loki has seen throughout this building he's imprisoned in. It's a much larger prison than his last cell on Asgard, but a cell none the less. "Why are you just dropping them there! Interns don't have interns, you know—it's not like someone is going to come behind you guys and move everything for you."

"You had one," one young woman fires back at Darcy in a self-important tone. She sets her hands on her hips and juts her chin out after dropping her box on the pile. "In England. It's on your file, just so you know."

Loki watches as Darcy pushes her glasses up her nose and purses her full lips. "Is your name Darcy Lewis?"

The young woman's brow furrows over her flinty grey eyes. "I'm Alexandra _Kennedy_."

"Aka, _not_ Darcy Lewis. No intern for you," Darcy says with finality and a wave of her fingers. Her skirmish resolved, she spins on the heel of her boot and claps her hands together. "So, Nicholas—"

"_Director Fury_," Fury corrects her, as he always does. He doesn't look up from the current computer screen that has his attention, but Loki can tell that Darcy has his attention.

"—Records on Charles Xavier, what we could find, at least. You know, if you'd have Tony and Bruce do something _useful_ around here, like, I don't know, fix the internal dropbox system instead of building solar panels in Kazakhstan, we could just send you the PDFs."

Fury spins in his chair and rises, snapping the lapels of his coat. He descends from his throne, Hill and Romanoff at his sides. Even Thor steps up to the crowd gathered around the stacks of bins and boxes, picks up a sheaf of paper like he would have the first idea of what to do with it. Loki spins back to the window, sets his ankle on his thigh, and drums his fingers on his knee. _Once upon a time_, he decides, running his eyes over the lines of the Lincoln Memorial, _Midgardians knew a thing or two about architecture_. America really should thank him for Manhattan, honestly, destroying all of those horrific, toxin-filled boxes humans called modern architecture.

Someone approaches him from the right and stops behind his shoulder. He tilts his head the slightest bit and sees Darcy staring down at where his new Stark Industries technology stops at the top of his palm.

"Fancy." She looks out of place among the other crisply-suited SHIELD agents with her slim-fitting jeans and gold bangles clattering up and down her wrists. "Is it true that they had to have Bruce sit on you when they were trading out the old ones?"

Loki feels his eyebrow twitch. "I—"

She holds up her finger, cutting off his sentence. "Just know that I'm totally gonna go find the video from the security camera no matter you say, so try to not fudge the truth too much because I will totally call your ass out on it the next time that Sif chick comes to visit Thor."

"It's rude to interrupt," he informs her.

"It's rude to throw a mythological temper tantrum and involve humans in it," she replies, dropping her head to the side. Shiny ringlets slip over her shoulder. "You missed your time frame by about 2,000 years, buddy. Humans these days don't want to actually _live_ the Iliad."

The word sounds unfamiliar to Loki, though it tumbles off Darcy's tongue easily. "The what?"

She stares at him for a moment, then laughs. _Laughs_, with her head tilted back and cheeks turning pink. "The Iliad. Homer. Ulysses and Achilles? The Trojan War? Oh, my god, dude. You're _kidding_ me right now. Hold on." She whips her tablet out of her bag and taps at the screen. "You would totally dig this, and you actually have enough free time to read it. Aw, no email yet? The Avengers' mascot needs an email. Okay so – Loki at shield dot com…and your password…"

Suddenly, she curses under her breath and drops into a squat. Balancing her tablet on her thighs, she digs through her bag again until her hands emerges with a scrap of paper and a pen. Loki warily watches her from his chair. Each time they cross paths, she's nearly rudely familiar with him, and her fragmented speech, full of hyperbole and layered sarcasm, keeps the wheels in his head spinning double-time.

"Here." She folds the paper in half and passes it to him between two blue-tipped fingers. "Check your email later. Three 'x's, don't forget," Darcy tells him with a wink. When he doesn't immediately move, she waves the paper in figure eights – "C'mon, it's paper; don't be scared." – until he plucks it from her hand.

Director Fury calls out her name, and both Darcy and Loki twist around and see him leaning over his railing, hands braced out to his sides. "Who is this Logan?" Director Fury speaks to Darcy, but meets Loki's eyes as though Loki reached out with some crook and dragged her over to him by force.

"Some ramblin' man. He teaches Art at the Institute." Darcy grips the arm of Loki's chair and hauls herself up to standing.

"Look deeper. Something's off with that guy." Darcy groans and shuffles towards the door, mumbling about late lunches and cramps and chocolate. "And _try_ to not piss off the Kennedy family while you're at it, Miss Lewis."

Darcy waves her hand dismissively as she passes by Fury on his dais. "Don't ask for impossible tasks, Nicholas."

"_Director Fury._"

* * *

Back in his chambers, well-guarded and armed and with Thor resting comfortably across the hall, Loki pulls the scrap of paper from his pocket.

_Username: loki at SHIELD dot gov_

_Password: darcyroxxx_

Her neat handwriting surprises him. He sets it on the desk in front of the screen and clicks on various icons on the desktop until he finds the electronic mail application.

A single email sits in his inbox from "darcyjlewis" and holds two strings of words and symbols. "Read this one first," Darcy had written ahead of the first string. He's seen SHIELD agents click on these, and so he does the same.

He recognizes the structure of an epic poem immediately, but the names are, for once, completely unfamiliar to him. It seems the Midgardians had been hard at work since the Asgardians had left them to their own devices.

_Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus,_

_That brought countless ills upon the Achaeans._

_Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, _

_And many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, _

_For so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day _

_On which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, _

_First fell out with one another._

_And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel?_

_It was the son of Jove and Leto; for he was angry with the king _

_And sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, _

_Because the son of Atreus had dishonored Chryses his priest . . ._

* * *

There's nothing in this world that I love more than getting comments on the story and characters, so please consider dropping me a note about how you felt about this chapter! I'm also on tumblr - my handle is labonsoirfemme. My ask box is always open. :D


	2. Chapter 2

SHIELD trusts Loki against its enemies and in its heart of hearts—the control center—but doesn't trust him out of Thor's sight anywhere other than in his upstairs apartment. So, Loki's seated in one of the SHIELD break rooms, ignoring the loud appreciation his not-brother holds for his stack of turkey and provolone sandwiches.

Rogers happily engages Thor over their mutual love of America's processed meat industry. Next to Rogers, Barnes picks at his grilled chicken salad quietly. Barnes is tied to Rogers just as Loki is tied to Thor. In that way, they are of a kind. But in another way, because Barnes has thrown himself in front of a bus, off a building, and in the way of an incoming missile for Rogers in the past year alone, they are nothing alike.

"Pastrami?" Thor asks. "Tell me of which animal you speak, Captain."

Rogers laughs. "It's just another way to season beef. We'll have to go out to Brooklyn one day—I'll take you to a Jewish deli for you to try it."

"I like this proposal!" Thor claps Rogers on the shoulder and gives him a shake, and Rogers smiles broadly back at Thor. Leaving the two of them to their bonding, Loki returns his attention to his book.

…_Promised is she,_

_gold-decked maid, to the glad son of Froda._

_Sage this seems to the Scylding's-friend,_

_kingdom's-keeper: he counts it wise_

_the woman to wed so and ward off feud,_

_store of slaughter. But seldom ever_

_when men are slain, does the murder-spear sink_

_but briefest while, though the bride be fair!_

A tray clatters down onto the table, and Darcy drops into the seat beside Loki. "How is it going, my strapping male companions?" She asks the table, popping the tab of her can. "I'm digging the haircut, Loki. It takes like, an entire millennia off your face."

He'd done it himself over the bathroom sink with some blunt scissors a few nights ago, cutting it back above his collar. His neck still feels strangely exposed, but the sensation will pass soon. "What is the god of mischief if not eternally young?" Loki says with the turn of the page.

Darcy reaches over—she's painted her nails crimson this week—and tilts the cover of the book up so she can read it. "So, you're liking it? Grendel's mother is like, the baddest villain to ever walk this earth."

"She seems to be quite a formidable adversary," Loki admits. "Though I've crossed swords with worse."

Barnes looks at the two of them like they're speaking in tongues. "It's just fiction."

"So says the metal-armed and immortal Soviet assassin eating lunch with the God of Thunder." Darcy snaps off a bite of her apple, leaving a smudge of pink gloss on the fruit's green flesh. "I mean, _this_ dude opened a rift in between worlds during his little identity crisis. I'm doing research on whether or not it's feasible to coat an entire skeleton in metal. And we're wondering whether monsters might or might not have lived in a swamp in primeval Britain?"

With a defeated but unconvinced shrug, Barnes turns back to his salad. While not having an opinion on Grendel's mother, Rogers has something else to share with Darcy. "That's a lovely blouse."

It's light blue, the color of her eyes. The neck scoops low over her full breasts that rise upwards with her inhale. Then she exhales, chest falling, and Loki drags his eyes away to the roll of condensation down his glass. With a toss of her curls, Darcy pulls her lips to the side in a half-smile. "Thanks, Captain. You're cutting a nice figure today your own self. All muscley in that tight black shirt." Rogers' cheeks pinken and Loki resists the urge to tell him that he can practically _smell _the virgin on him.

She turns her eyes to Loki and nudges his tray with her fingers. "Better eat up, Destroyer of Worlds. If you wanna keep up with your brother, that is."

Loki licks his finger and turns the next page. "_Adoptive _brother."

"Same difference." He feels her eyes sweep over him, then her hand is on his arm, squeezing gently through the fabric of his shirt. Loki jolts at the sensation—the first female touch since he covered Jane Foster with his body nearly a year ago. Thor and Rogers immediately drop their sandwiches and pull their feet up underneath their chairs, as if Loki would turn and attack Darcy in front of them and the other 75 SHIELD agents and without his magic to escape. "Hey, you're not too scrawny either, Loki. You should take a page out of these guys' books and let your torso breathe. And by that I mean, you should totally walk around shirtless."

She's turned her playful smirk on him now, and it's been too long since he's had a woman do anything other than scream and shout at him that he takes a moment to organize his words. "I doubt Director Fury would look favorably on that."

"Psh." Darcy crosses her legs towards him and takes another bite of her apple. "Nicholas is but a tiny part of SHIELD. It's the little people you've got to get back on your good side. Like Lucy Liu over there," she jerks her head at a black-suited woman blowing gently on her spoonful of chili, "she could be in charge of video surveillance during the next apocalyptic crisis and just might choose to glance away when she knows someone is sneaking up on you. But if she happens to battle inside of herself about whether she should save that godly six-pack?" She lets her suggestion trail off and shrugs noncommittally, lifting her drink to her mouth and taking a swig.

"No one can sneak up on me," Loki tells her. "Not when I can hear the carbonation in that can even through that…insulation you have wrapped around it."

Darcy narrows her eyes at him from behind her glasses. "Challenge accepted. And it's called a 'coozie.'" Beside her tray, her phone buzzes and lights up. She huffs a sigh and picks it up, scrolling through her message. "Great—a working lunch. Ugh, I don't care what you say, Steve—the modern world is beyond cruel."

With lackadaisical care, she flips the lid closed over her lasagna and hitches her bag over her shoulder. "Much as I would rather hang out with all of you chisel-jawed hunks, I've gotta go boss some interns around," Darcy informs them, pushing her glasses up her nose. She grabs her box and drink and turns to walk away to the tune of the rest of the table saying goodbye to her. "Try _Gilgamesh_ next," she says in parting, leaning over his shoulder.

Her hair brushing the back of his neck feels like cool silk.

* * *

His bracelets have never felt more like shackles in this moment, with Thor and Falcon on the other side of the city and Stark high in the sky. He lost his earpiece some minutes ago, meaning that any call for help would be futile among the shrieks of rending metal and the rumble of crackling asphalt.

Agent Hill had kept hold of the heliboard when it had flipped in the air; Loki'd reached out too late and fallen the hundred feet to the road below, cratering it on impact. Bystanders watched in amazement as he'd hauled himself to his feet with just a cough or two and walked away from the site. Luckily, none of them have recognized his face yet, or he'd be staring down an angry mob and taking the blame for the current crisis. Darcy had been right that day in the elevator, surely—it's his helm that would have given him away.

SHIELD's light armor makes it easy for him to bob and weave to the sidewalk. Another explosion sounds above him and he ducks around a corner and under an awning to avoid falling debris.

He nearly runs right over Darcy Lewis, her back pressed up against a wall while she fiddles with some machinery. "I swear to god," she shouts above the chaos and gesturing with the machine in her hand. "I'm demanding a raise after this! Or a shot of whatever juice they gave to Steve!"

A steel bar smashes into the street, decimating a line of parallel-parked cars. "I'd go with the latter," Loki recommends, and Darcy immediately nods. "Have you aligned the sensors?"

"I need to get to that corner down there." Darcy pointed across the street. "But… I did something to my ankle."

Loki looks down and realizes that her injury is why she was leaning back against the building—she's got her foot picked up off the ground. If they don't get Stark's sensors up and running, the entire city is going to fall into the Earth's core and melt away. Which he honestly doesn't care too much about, but he was dragged along with Thor and Loki will be damned if "melted in a planet's core" is how he's going to die.

He drops to his knee and rolls up her pant leg. She hisses and he hears the thud of the back of her head against the brick of the building. "My mother taught me healing magic as a boy," he tells her. He palpates the swollen flesh, trying to feel down to the bone. As he pokes and prods around her ankle, she pulls her lip between her teeth and groans in her chest.

The glint of the steel around his wrists infuriates him. Illusions and small transmutations have been easy enough, but rearranging living tissues? "Hold still," he instructs, and she nods in his periphery. He reaches out his magic, weaves through the inflamed muscle strands to the bone, just like his mother had shown him all those centuries ago. It's the mental equivalent of running up a hill—the more that he wants his magic to do, the harder it is, edging towards physically impossible. When you can literally run hundreds of miles without getting winded, it's not only a frustrating feeling, it's a foreign one.

There's a fracture, precariously close to the bottom of her fibula. He shoves his magic up that damned hill, guiding the two pieces of bone towards each other and cross-stitching his magic along the crevice. But when he goes to tug his magic tight, like Frigga's maid would do to her corsets, his connection snaps. Like Sisyphus, his magic goes tumbling backwards, head over heels.

Cursing under his breath, he looks up at her. Darcy's staring at him with the _I'm impressed but still suspicious of you_ look that he's grown accustomed to over the past year. "I stabilized the bone, but I couldn't fix it wholly, and I couldn't do anything for the swelling. Can you walk?"

She takes the hand he offers and takes a single step forward. She winces, but grits her teeth and nods. Thor blasts past, leaving a burst of wind in his wake. Her loose hair flies into her face and she bats it out of the way. "Let's go."

Slowly but surely, they hobble forward under the eaves of the storefronts. Loki knows that he will have to carry her across the street and over the strewn cars but, for now, he can keep his focus on the skies. "Darcy here," he hears her say into her earpiece. "Heading towards the final signal point with Loki. … ETA? ehhhhh, when we get there. … Well, you're more than welcome to come join us down here if you're dissatisfied with our job performance, Ben."

At the end of the block, Loki bends down and waits for her to climb onto his back. When she doesn't immediately hop on, he looks back over his shoulder. She's smirking down at him with dancing blue eyes, the expression so out of sync with the giant balls of fire and smoke clouding the sky behind her head. "Gimme a minute," she tells him. "I'm enjoying the view of you on your knees at my feet."

Loki rolls his eyes heavenward. "Would you like to die here in the middle of nowhere or in bed of old age?"

Finally leaning over, Darcy wraps her arms around his shoulders. "There are only two things I ever want to do in bed—sleep and sex. Dying's not ever gonna be a part of the equation." With a chuckle, Loki catches Darcy under her knees and hoists her up over his hips. "Although, did you know that old people in nursing homes apparently have like, bangin' sex lives. I would think everything gets…dry down there."

Normal men would strain under the weight of a human on their back, even on flat surfaces, and climbing over wreckage would be out of the questions. But Loki's not a normal man. He's followed Thor into battle for centuries and has carried his adoptive brother's dead weight through mountain passes and riverbeds afterwards. Darcy's shapely form and a few turned-over cars is as easy as skipping stones.

"Perhaps it is, as you humans say, not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean?"

Darcy giggles in his ear. Her breath smells like the spearmint gum she'd offered him in the helicopter on the way into this city. It's a welcome respite from the stink of burning ash.

"Those ladies can speak for themselves but I'm still looking for a two-hundred foot yacht." She squeezes her thighs and Loki tells himself that she's just adjusting her hold after they've down from the hood of a minivan. Then: "Well, you would know, wouldn't you, grandpa?"

"I'm still young by Jotunheim and Aesir standards." His voice comes out lower than he intended. He wills himself to focus on placing one foot in front of another but…with her thighs around his hips, her breasts against his back, and the pretty slope of her nose in his periphery, can he be blamed?

Still, Darcy scoffs. "You do realize that you are _so old_ that you are a legit ancient mythological figure, right?"

Loki clears the last vehicle and sets her down, catching the curve of her slim waist when she stumbles. "And gods are forever young."

Darcy gives a queer sideways nod of her head and folds her fingers into mimicries of Midgardian firearms. "Touché. Alright, let's get this sensor aligned and save the world. Again."

* * *

By the time the leaves begin to drop from the trees and SHIELD agents arrive for work wrapped in scarves and jackets, Director Fury finally allows Loki outside. Just the grounds of the SHIELD compound at first, but that doesn't stop Loki from tilting his head back in the winter sun and taking deep breaths of fresh air. Thor joins him, as required, but it's far easier tune him out when there are trees and birds and passersby to which Loki can direct his attention.

Television commercials begin to blather on and on about the "holidays." Some internet research reveals to Loki that, at this point in the year, those who follow the Christian religion celebrate the birth of their messiah figure, Jesus Christ. What amuses Loki, however, is how many "Christmas" traditions are blatantly ripped from the very people that once worshipped Loki and his family as gods. Rogers hadn't taken too kindly to Loki pointing out that the Yule Log and the "Christmas" tree were once used by Vikings to thank the Aesir for the bounty the immortals had bestowed upon them.

After they destroyed the thirtieth-floor cafeteria, Loki had been forced to sit through lectures from Director Fury and Thor about not antagonizing people "on his team." Rogers, Loki didn't fail to note, escaped that particular fate.

Rogers appears to be in a better mood tonight, however, even clasping Loki's hand when Loki, Thor, and Jane Foster arrive at Samuel Wilson's condominium for an evening party. Thor had been confused as to what a "cocktail party" entailed, particularly when Jane told him to "please not eat _all_ of the food – you're not supposed to actually get full." Eventually, Thor and Loki understood that the point was to drink, but not get drunk, eat, but not get full, and look nice, despite seeing all of the same people they see every day.

Jane Foster presses beers into their hands and the brothers promptly lift them to their lips, chug them down. Wilson has been around Rogers, Thor, and Barnes long enough now and Jane Foster doesn't look the slightest bit guilty as she passes them two more and takes their empty bottles. Compared to the alcoholic fare in Asgard, even the "artisan" earthling beers slide down Loki's throat as easily as water.

"I also have liquor," Loki hears Wilson tell Jane and Romanoff. "But it'd be nice if they got buzzed before breaking into that. I'm not made of money, you know."

Romanoff pats his arm. "Just get me an inventory tomorrow. I'll make sure Fury refunds you." Wilson doesn't seem too assuaged by that promise.

Wilson's living quarters are well-enough appointed, possessing more of a personal touch than Loki's back at SHIELD headquarters. Agent Hill and Jane Foster make amiable conversation under a series of photographs of what are clearly Wilson's family members. Standing together in short black dresses, they look very much like sisters. By contrast, Romanoff's traded in her usual black for a green frock, appearing decidedly tame while sipping her white wine and nodding along to another of Barnes' "back in the 1940s…" stories.

Loki meanders the condominium, not caring that eyes follow him wherever he goes. If they wish to believe that his new brand of evil would be to up-end a table in a condominium in a suburb, so be it. Other SHIELD employees—he recognizes their faces, doesn't care to ask their names—stare openly at times, ignore him at other times. It's intriguing, though, to see them all out of their day garb and in other raiments that have clearly been chosen to highlight the attributes they care most about. Women of this realm seem to favor their legs, if the shortness of their skirts and the tightness of their hose is anything to go by. Loki doesn't dare complain.

In the sitting room, Darcy Lewis leans against the back of a sofa, legs crossed at the ankle, surveying a large framed image on the wall at eye-level. "Loki," she says, lifting her glass of wine and drawing out the last syllable of his name in the same way she does with Rogers' and Thor's. Loki feels a familiar swirl of warmth behind his sternum, though it's not a sensation he's entertained in years. "Who took you shopping for the threads?"

Loki takes one long, sideways step to stand next to her. Her blue dress shimmers in the lamplight as she turns her torso towards him. Loki fingers the length of his black tie, then the stiffness of his white shirt cuffs. "Jane Foster. Or, rather, she took my measurements and returned with a stack of options. Thor accompanied her…yet, by all accounts, it proved more difficult to accommodate his frame."

A thud from the other room jerks their attention to the dining room, where Thor and Rogers each pick up a second stein and begin to take large, sloppy swallows. Spent steins sit on the table before them, headfoam running down the insides of the glasses. Around them, an audience has formed and cheers them on while Romanoff and Jane pop new cans and pour them into the first steins, trying to beat the men's pace.

Thor roars in victory when he finishes his second stein, even though Rogers is already taking his last swallow. By the time he finishes his outburst, Rogers is even with him again, and each man scrambles to change out steins with Jane and Romanoff more quickly than the other. Well-accustomed to predictably alcoholic tournaments, Loki turns back to the framed artwork and regards it while taking down the last of his beer in a succession of long pulls. "You know this work of art?"

"Mmm. Not _this_ particular one," Darcy says, suddenly glancing down and twitching at the scalloped edge of her skirt. The fine, sheer mesh of her hose shines in the light. "It's one of Monet's water lily paintings, though."

"I see no brushstrokes."

She laughs, tucking her chin to her chest. Loki notes that without her glasses, he can see the kohl she's smudged around her eyes. Her irises look the same color as her dress—a fetching portrait she would make if painted. "This is just like, a big photograph of the painting. I'm sure the real thing is in some museum somewhere. But this lets us humble middle-classers have fancy art on our walls."

He sets his empty bottle on the end table and pulls another from his pocket. Darcy nods approvingly purses her berry-stained lips. Again, Loki feels the warm quiver behind his sternum. "And the import of this painting is…?"

"_Well_," Darcy straightens her spine and tosses her hair out of her face, revealing the little mole below her eye. "This is all from my Art History class in college, of course, but the paintings are a study in the collapse of visual fields. So—we see the water lilies on the water's surface, of course, but we also see, the murky shapes of things _below_ the surface, and the shadows of the branches and such that hang _above_ the surface. But: We look at all three in the single field of the water's surface, which is what makes the series so famous."

Loki follows the lines of the painting with his eyes as Darcy speaks, seeing the mastery of it all as soon as she points it out. In the corner of his eye, she tips her head back and lets the rest of her wine drain down her throat. "Another drink?" he hears himself ask with the same smooth timbre he's used for centuries.

She _tsk_s and reaches behind one of the couch cushions, pulling her hand back wrapped around the neck of a half-full wine bottle. "A lady is always prepared."

Still, he holds out his open palm and takes the bottle when she passes it to him. He uncorks it with the flick of his wrist, watches the peachy liquid swirl out of the bottle and into her glass. "White Zinfandel," she tells him when he turns the bottle to look at the label. "Totally girly. Totally delicious. Wanna try it?"

It is 'girly.' Too fruity for his taste, particularly with the taste of her lip gloss on his tongue. Still, he understands the appeal—the fruity taste covers up the clear lack of aging and the absence of a strong alcoholic note is probably ideal for a young woman like Darcy, whom he knows spends late nights in her office rather than out taking advantage of early evening drink specials with her coworkers.

"Do you have painters in Asgard?" She takes the drink back from him and sips. The light through the wine casts a lovely array across the bodice of her silky dress, not unlike the colored glass he's seen time and again in the religious buildings of this realm.

Loki hums. "Sculptors, moreso—"

"Heeeeeeyyy, look who's caught under the mistletoe!" Wilson, unlike Thor and Rogers, with whom he's been trying to keep up in the alcohol consumption department, is clearly crossing the line from pleasantly-tipsy into intoxicated.

Darcy glances upwards, and then barks out a disbelieved laugh. A sprig of plastic mistletoe hangs above the two of them. "Oh, you've kept this tradition as well?" Loki asks. His tongue has been loosened by the number of beers he has consumed. It's nothing compared to his usual tolerance, but he also knows that it's enough to send a normal Midgardian to a hospital. Regardless, realizing that humans still hang sprigs of the poisonous berries fills him with a sort of pride, and Loki can't help the grin that spreads across his face.

"Wait, wait, wait. You know about _mistletoe_?" Wilson seems confused and amused.

For his part, Thor finds it all hilarious, snickering into his hand despite Jane's tugs on his shirtsleeve. Loki meets his brother's eyes in camaraderie, rather than animosity. "You all adhere to this tradition and don't even know its origin? _I'm_ the one who hung the first sprig. Just a bit of fun, of course, and you humans kept it for…thousands of years, it would seem."

"_You_ hung the mistletoe? Bad_ass_, dude." Darcy's smiling at him, eyes dancing, and Loki is amazed that he's never thought to use mistletoe with his lovers over the years.

"'Tis quite the tale," Thor chimes in, ready as always to bring attention back to himself. "Two clans had feuded for decades over trapping rights and whether their respective lands ended at riverbeds or tree lines. They sought the help of the gods—us, at that time, keeping watch over Midgard to ensure no one used the alignment of the realms to invade Midgard as the frost giants had. I thought that a battle would settle the score, once and for all; my mother believed that diplomacy amongst the chieftains would be best, so each man could air his grievances."

"The Allfather thought that we shouldn't interfere at all," Loki added, falsely jovial. "He's always been concerned with Midgard itself, not the people that inhabit it. You're all much to weak and short-lived to keep his interest."

Darcy pokes his arm. "I see where you get it from, _Odinson_."

Only the knowledge that she's jesting and not purposefully scraping a sore spot keeps him from reminding her that he is _not_ a true son of Odin. Still, he brushes his sleeve in the wake of her sharp knuckle.

"Loki knew to play on the…desires of the flesh of mortals, shall we say. And his plan succeeded."

"Do I need to earmuffs Kelly?" Darcy asks, pointing at a fresh-faced young woman on the couch. Loki recognizes her blonde curls from Fury's control room. "She's the youngest here, so…"

"Oh, please," Kelly scoffed. "_You_ borrow my bodice-rippers and give them back all dog-eared."

Loki arches a brow at Darcy, who lifts her pink wine to her pink face and takes a sip. "Times of strife are the best times for reckless decisions," he continues. "So, I lured the first son of the first clan and the first daughter of the second clan out into the woods via various trickeries and caused them to meet under a tree hosting a cluster of mistletoe. They laid together, as I'd planned, and when she discovered her pregnancy, the two clans arranged a marriage in such a way that brought the feuding to rest."

"Sex and politics. I can dig it," Darcy grinned.

"And from then on, it became the custom to kiss under the mistletoe, to remember how love can set aside even the bitterest of rivalries." Thor announced, with the same proverbial tone Odin so often used while trying to use history to teach Thor and Loki moral lessons before bed.

Loki scoffed. "Not quite how I intended it, but humans will make of godly interventions what they will."

Darcy sets her glass on the end table and declares, "Well, now I _have_ to kiss the god who first hung the mistletoe under his own mistletoe."

Romanoff shakes her head from across the room. "I don't think that's a good idea," she says in that infuriatingly calm and even voice, but Darcy ignores her and pivots towards him.

With all eyes on them, Loki can barely focus on Darcy's upturned face. Distantly, he notes the impish grin that dances across her mouth before he leans down and gives her a chaste kiss. It's off-center, because he's too distracted by the Rogers' and Romanoff's disapproving stares to aim true. Still, he holds his mouth to hers for one, two seconds, and pulls away just as she starts to lean into the kiss.

The crowd claps and hollers; Darcy laughs and gives a little curtsey. When she picks up her wine, though, her sharp eyes settle on him. They follow him when he walks briskly towards the kitchen for another beer. Thor slaps him on the shoulder, but Loki rolls his shoulder until the paw falls away.

The Midgardian ale eventually hits his bladder and Loki is forced to retreat to Wilson's lavatory. It's on the other side of the condominium, down a dark hallway flanked with some half-open doors—Loki presumes they are bedchambers—and around a corner. The rooms in which earthlings bathe and care for themselves are admittedly more efficient than those used by the Aesir, who still use chamber pots when feeling nostalgic. After Loki tucks himself back into his pants, washes his hands, and gives his face and clothes a once over in the mirror above the sink, he opens the door and stepped out.

He can feel her; the displacement of the space in a nearby chamber. The door stands slightly more ajar than it had when he'd first passed by. He braces his palm on the jamb and sees her standing by the window, looking out over the river. "Needed a breath of fresh air?" he quips, even though he knows that she's clearly come here to speak to him.

Darcy turns sideways and braces her hip on the windowsill, drums her fingertips on the manufactured and painted wood. She hadn't turned a light on, so she's set in relief by the clear moonlight outside, her dress shimmering across her belly and breasts. "You can kiss me for real now," she tells him, voice quieter than normal in the darkness of the room. "If you want."

Loki's stomach twists all hot and lovely, particularly when she gives a little laugh and raises her eyebrows. "I know how you look at me, Loki."

"Oh?" He steps into the room and joins her at the window. The moonlight makes her skin pearly and luminescent and sets a glimmer in her eyes. Her skin is as soft as it looks, too, when he curls his fingers under her jaw and runs the pad of his thumb over the curve of her chin. "And how is that, exactly?"

Her eyes slide from his eyes down to his mouth, her eyelashes sweep down and out like a butterfly's wings. "Like you are right now."

She waits for him, which is new. He's used to women pushing forward into his space, afraid that he'll lose interest in the last moment and leave them stalled on their push towards the throne. So he pulls her in with an arm around her waist, watching from under hooded eyes as her head tilts backwards with the movement and her eyelashes drop that last small distance to rest against her cheekbones. With care, he meets her mouth with his and revels in the huff of a sigh she lets out through her nose.

She shifts, brings her hands to hold the backs of his shoulders, and turns her head to brush her tongue against his. Her mouth is warm and wet, the slide of her tongue against his is the most delicious soft friction. When he closes his eyes, he becomes acutely aware of the trim nip of her waist and the press of her breasts against his chest. Her hair slides cool and smooth between his fingers and Darcy follows the gentle nudge of his fingers, turns her head to the other side and meets his mouth again. Later, Loki will be the slightest bit ashamed at the sloppy press of their lips and the over-eager clink of their teeth. But right now, with the hums Darcy makes in her throat and her coy grin when he shudders at the press of her fingers between his ribs.

"Ticklish?" Darcy asks. Her hair is mussed where his hands have worked through it, and her lips are…beautifully swollen. Loki leans back in and catches her lower lip with his teeth before he can stop himself, smooths it away with a chaste kiss just as quickly.

"Just slightly, clearly." They hold their breath as someone passes by the open door. Darcy rocks back on her heels and runs her palm down his arm, fingers catching along the cords of his muscles. "Cheeky," he murmurs.

"Appreciative," Darcy chirps back. "Of everything that just happened, bee tee dubs." Her expression shifts, eyebrows pulling together. "I was angry at you, you know. For kissing me like a piece of rotting meat out there."

He skims his hand to her waist; when he stretches his thumb upwards, he can feel the swell of her breast. "On the contrary, I'd say you're very much alive."

Darcy laughs, taps her finger on the knot of his tie. "Now _you're_ being cheeky."

Later that night, when he's lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, he curses how easily he'd parroted "_Appreciative_" all smooth and silky just as she'd done. How his skin had seemed chilled once she'd slipped from his arms and left him at the window alone. He should want nothing more than to escape from those wretched cuffs around his wrists and flee this abominable building. But Loki knows that such an attempt would be premature for another dozen years or so. Humans have such enduring memories and grudges.

With an exasperated sigh, Loki rolls over and wrestles his pillow into submission.

* * *

Loki's been living on Midgard for a year before he meets the elusive Pepper Potts. She stays behind in New York City whenever Stark comes to SHIELD for conferences and training, after all. When they finally cross paths at lavish press event in the ballroom of Stark Tower, even Loki can understand Stark's attraction.

She's sleek and poised in a red column gown, icy blonde hair cascading down her back in a glossy curtain. It looks more like Stark is on _her_ arm than the other way around.

"Charmed," Loki says with a tight smile, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing the backs of it. After all, everyone knows that Stark runs Stark Industries, but Pepper Potts runs Stark.

For her credit, she doesn't snatch her hand back in front of the cameras, just refuses to acknowledge him once he lets go of her fingers. Coolly, she takes in his face, arches a brow, and then turns away without another word. Stark follows behind, running his hand down her back in a soothing manner as they go.

"What happened there?" Barnes asks at his shoulder, and Loki shrugs.

"Stark and I…exchanged words upstairs," Loki admits, twitching down the sleeves of his silky black suit jacket. "And I leveled a few buildings."

Rogers frowns and cuts a side glance at him. "Don't remind me of that tonight, please." He snags a tumbler of amber liquid from the tray. "All I want to do is have a nice time, drink enough to get a light buzz, and find a lovely lady to dance with."

And lovely ladies are in abundance. Loki sees Agent Hill handing off her shawl at the door, revealing a svelte, long-sleeved black gown. On the dance floor, Jane Foster twirls in a gauzy, light blue dress under Thor's watchful gaze. Other women meander by, gems glinting in the dim light of the chandeliers as they chat with each other or with the men snapping at their heels. As if summoned by the god of mischief himself, Natasha Romanoff strolls past the three of them on Barton's arm. Skipping Loki completely, her eyes sweep over Rogers and Barnes' well-fitted tuxedos and broad shoulders as she sashays away.

It was the kind of mischief that Loki would have amused himself with if he were allowed full use of his magic, but this arrangement is completely free of his trickery. It doesn't stop him from delighting in the way that Barnes and Rogers both follow Romanoff and Barton towards the long bay of windows on the other side of the room, jockeying for position on her right side. It's like Eris tossing the golden apple into the group of them, really.

Speaking of drinks, however…

Loki fingers his cufflinks and looks around for the bar. Against the far wall, he sees the bank of shelved liquors and the stretch of dark wood, and he sees _her._ Chestnut hair sweeps around and over her shoulder, baring a long expanse of skin to the air.

He finds himself crossing the room before he really thinks much about it, sliding onto the stool next to her. Normally, she would jump at his sudden arrival and comment on his devilish quiet, but tonight she just lets a smile curve her full lips upwards. He can smell the aroma of distilled malt and grain, and his eyes drop to the low-profile glass on the stretch of bar in front of her. Only the slightest bit of scotch remains in the bottom, and her fingertips, glossed with peach polish, run around the rim.

For all of her normal love of leather and beaded bracelets, the only adornments on her figure are a pair of glittering diamonds in her earlobes, and Loki has to run his eyes down her neck, across her clavicle, and along the lines of her bare arms before they trip across the oblong and filigreed ring on a single finger. "Nausicaa of the white arms," he greets her, and he watches in near slow motion as she leans forward and presents him with her cheek. Her skin is smooth under his lips, her shoulder warm under his hand, and she smells of cedar and sandalwood save for the slightly starchy scent in her hair that he's come to recognize as "hairspray."

When she leans back upright in her stool, she sets her elbow on the bar in a way that sets her décolleté in warm relief above the bodice of her aubergine gown. With eyes that seem a much deeper blue in the glow of the chandelier, she pins him with a stare. "So, you've read the Odyssey then?"

Loki raised his finger for the bartender. "Preferred it to the Iliad, in fact." The bartender steps over, a clean-cut young man with wide eyes for Darcy, and waits for Loki to speak. "A refill for Lady Darcy and the same for me."

"Three fingers, Johnny," Darcy clarifies. The bartender stutters, "oh, my name is Jack," but Darcy has turned her face back to Loki. "I thought you might. Thor might be more of a fan of Achilles and the fall of Troy."

Loki chuckles. "Thor wouldn't make it through twenty lines of that book before giving up."

"So Ulysses is more your type?"

Eyes dropping to the swell of her breasts and the nip of her waist, Loki murmurs, "well, I hesitate to call him my _type_ but I found myself much more amused by his approach to problem-solving."

"'No one.' _So_ classic." The bartender slides their drinks across the counter and Darcy lifts hers to the space between them. "To victory in battle and to those who write it down."

Their glasses clink together lightly, and they sip the strong, smooth liquor in unison. "I wouldn't have figured you for scotch," Loki notes, setting his glass down on the bar.

With a wink, Darcy runs her finger along the grain of the bartop. "I _do_ love wine. Merlot is my current favorite. But Tony is paying and it's an open bar, so I might as well indulge. I mean, I'm not gonna be fancy on my own dime."

"Perfectly reasonable." He's never seen her outside of work, but she doesn't seem to make a particularly copious amount of money, judging from the overall quality of her wardrobe. More than others he's run across here on Earth, for sure, given that SHIELD wants to keep her with them and not lose her to a "private contractor," but nothing like Pepper Potts or even Romanoff.

"Listen," she begins, sliding her finger along the corner of the bar. "I'm going to be taking a field trip up to New York State pretty soon—Nicholas wants me to come up with some sort of operation on this Institute for Gifted Youngsters. I want you to come along."

Loki takes another sip of scotch and listens to the orchestra slide from one song into the next on the dance floor. "Why?"

Loosely wrapping her hand around her glass, Darcy twists more towards him in her seat. "Well—you can do magic, first of all. Yeah, you're restricted, but what you can do is _way_ more than a human can do. You could be our 'in'—our gifted youngster."

"Weren't you telling me just a few weeks ago that I'm an ancient mythological creature?"

"Didn't you tell me that gods are forever young?" Darcy winks at Loki; the scotch isn't the only thing making him warm. "And you're definitely a master at trickery and diversions, so I figure you've got a fast mind and an even quicker tongue."

Wicked images explode in his mind and, letting his impulses rule him, Loki kisses her. She squeaks a bit in surprise and her hand flutters up to his neck, pointer finger catching the corner of his jaw. Her mouth opens under his when he flicks his tongue over her lower lip, and he slips his hand around her rib to haul her to the very edge of her stool. A moan vibrates up and out of her throat and then, with a suddenness he didn't expect, she wrenches away.

She's already a touch disheveled—eyes too-bright, cheeks too-pink. Johnny-Jack stares at them, agape, but Darcy doesn't seem to notice him. She slides down from her stool, her skirts swishing and crinkling, and then laces her fingers through Loki's.

"This way—I had a conference here before."

No one pays them much mind as they stride towards an open doorway by the end of the bar; Loki keeps his head tilted away from the main floor, and he _is _in a generic black tuxedo. Through the doorway they go, into hallway permeated with the same mood-lighting as the main event and flanked with armchairs and love seats. She leads him around another corner and down another hallway, finally ducking behind a bookcase.

They're next to a window overlooking the Brooklyn skyline (Thor had dragged him along on his outing with Rogers for lunch), but Loki pays it no mind other than to appreciate how the lights highlighted Darcy's hair and made her skin look even more fey against the dark purple of her dress.

She's handsier now, boldly sliping her hands under his jacket when he leans down and noses her jawline. Her pulse point tastes faintly of alcohol from her perfume, but he cares much more about her shudder when he laps at her skin and her moan when he closes his teeth over her earlobe.

Her breasts fill his hands, though the stiffness of her dress frustrates him. He's not so foolish as to search for the fastenings—they _are_ at a party and need to stay clothed—but, gods, he wishes they were in a bedchamber. He'd spread her on the bed, strip her naked, and find every little spot that makes her shiver and groan. Loki tells her this and it sends her into even more of a frenzy, clutching at his tie and fisting the too-long hair at the nape of his neck.

Loki hasn't tired of kissing her yet, either. She laps at the back of his top teeth, sucks on his tongue, nips his lips, smiles toothily when she shakes noises loose from Loki's chest. Then she's guiding his hand to her skirts while she makes a pass across the front of his slacks. He's hard, and _gods_ he wants nothing more than her perfectly-manicured hand wrapped around him, but not when she's in such a lovely dress and people are still passing by so closely that Loki can hear their conversations.

So he bats her hand away but uses both of his to hike her skirts to her hips. She's hot and warm between her legs, and her body goes all quivery with every stroke of his fingers. Darcy murmurs in his ear half-nonsense, half-direction, and Loki follows orders. The expressions on her face flutter between struggle and pleasure while the capillaries in her cheeks and chest open. It's absolutely lovely watching the goosebumps break out across her arms mere seconds before her mouth drops open and she rises up onto her toes with her orgasm. Ecstasy, the purest of magic, courses through her skin so powerfully he can almost taste it.

"Were we on Asgard," he murmurs, when she's recovered and his own desire has been firmly stamped down, "I would ask you to my chambers and we wouldn't leave for a week."

Darcy rolls her head back on the forearm he's rested behind her shoulders. "'Chambers,' huh? I'm imagining a four-poster bed and a massive fireplace. Do they have a balcony that faces the sunset?"

"No balcony."

Darcy groans and extricates herself from his arms. "Then I would callously decline your offer, Loki of Asgard, for Lady Darcy only hooks up with princes with sunset-optimal balconies." She wiggles the top of her gown and swats at her skirts. "So — you don't invite ladies back to your chambers until _after_ you've had your hand up their skirts?"

With a flick of her hair, she rounds the bookcase and starts back towards the side hall. "Oh, no, I've always required a full performance beforehand," Loki drawls.

"Well, I hope the hay in Asgard is comfortable, for the girl's sakes," Darcy quips. She's still flushed, but it's fading, and she's finger combed her hair back into order. She looks so neat and tidy that Loki wants to drag her back into the shadows until he can make her face screw up in pleasure again. But then she turns to him, gesturing for him to listen to the change in the music tempo. She reaches out her hands, ring glinting on her slim fingers. "At the very least, you could take me dancing."

* * *

Two chapters down, one to go! I would love to hear your thoughts, so consider dropping a comment below!


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